The public debate over Islam is ultimately, one suspects, fuelled by fear of no longer being able to influence the transformation processes within the country to an adequate extent. However, it is also clear that Islam itself is equally a victim of global transformation processes. The rise of fundamentalism, as so often in such cases, is a reaction to this circumstance, with the hardly edifying picture that Islam presents today its lamentable result. -- Stefan Weidner

America is a nation of immigrants, and no place opens its doors more widely to the world than New York City. America is the land of opportunity, and no place offers its residents more opportunity to pursue their dreams than New York City. America is beacon of freedom, and no place defends those freedoms more fervently, or has been attacked for those freedoms more ferociously, than New York City. In recent weeks, a debate has arisen that I believe cuts to the core of who we are as a city and a country. The proposal to build a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan has created a national conversation on religion in America, and since Ramadan offers a time for reflection, I’d like to take a few minutes to reflect on the subject. There are people of good will on both sides of the debate, and I would hope that everyone can carry on the dialogue in a civil and respectful way. In fact, I think most people now agree on two fundamental issues: First, that Muslims have a constitutional right to build a mosque in Lower Manhattan and second, that the site of the World Trade Center is hallowed ground. The only question we face is: how do we honor that hallowed ground? -- New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg

The conservative Muslims perceive a fundamental antagonism between Islam and the values of our society. They propagate the withdrawal of many emancipatory developments of the modern age and view the idea of harmonising Islamic studies with western academic standards with great suspicion, thereby often avoiding use of the term "theology". Even though they are likely to enjoy some support within the Muslim population, one would be completely justified in doubting that they can be expected to serve as mediators for Islam in our society. --Klaus von Stosch

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is around, even a firecracker going off can prompt suspicions of an assassination attempt. And even though Iran is still years away from having the technology to build an atom bomb – anything but a firecracker – opinion leaders in the West are all held in thrall by this one single theme.

Meanwhile, the major problem inside the Islamic Republic is its legitimation crisis. And not only since last summer, when protests against the re-election of the President had to be violently suppressed. The regime can break all the fever thermometers, but that won't reduce the patient's temperature. -- Rudolph Chimelli

I commend New York’s enlightended mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who supported the Cordoba project, to send Palin, for her education, a copyof Yale professor Maria Rosa Menocal’s masterpiece, The Ornament of the World, on how “ Muslims, Jews, and Christians created a culture of tolerance in medieval Spain”. And it lasted 700 years. Which, precisely, is the reason why the Manhattan structure will be so named. – Saeed Naqvi

As the American withdrawal gains speed, there are fewer American troops in Iraq than in Afghanistan for the first time since 2003. By the end of August there will be no US combat troops left in Iraq, though some tens of thousands of support troops will remain until next year. And still there is no new Iraqi Government, although it is now four months since the election on 7 March....

All the Iraqis can reasonably hope for, in the aftermath of the US occupation, is corrupt Governments riven by sectarian and ethnic divisions, but that is probably a stable outcome provided there is enough money. And to be fair to the Americans, no other post-Saddam, post-occupation outcome was ever likely....

The “dumb war”, as the US President Barack Obama called it, is over. The almost-as-dumb war continues.-- Gwynne Dyer

The latest outbreak of this paranoia is the anti-Muslim sentiment that is becoming increasingly common and increasingly pernicious. While by no means at the level of interment camps or extermination orders, the anti-Muslim rhetoric nonetheless raises serious concerns. A Houston radio host feels comfortable advocating that a mosque be bombed if built near the site of Ground Zero. A few weeks ago, a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida actually was bombed – the most recent of several mosque bombings that have occurred over the past few year. – Asma T. Uddin

Outlawing the burqa then is all about sending a message, not safeguarding women's rights or strengthening administrative efficiency. A ban in countries where the burqa is barely the norm is easy feel-good politics but essential legislative symbolism. It is in Syria, which banned the burqa last Monday despite its 87 per cent Muslim population, that the new policy denotes substantive change. This is of a piece with Tunisia forbidding civil servants to wear the niqab, Turkey's headscarf ban in universities and public offices and Egypt's highest ranking Muslim cleric prohibiting face veils at Al-Azhar University last year.- Rashmee Roshan Lall

Five arguments are commonly made in favour of proposed bans on burqas and headscarfs. First, it is argued that security requires people to show their faces when appearing in public places. A second, closely related, argument says that the kind of transparency and reciprocity proper to relations between citizens is impeded by covering part of the face.

What is wrong with both of these arguments is that they are applied inconsistently. It gets very cold in Chicago — as, indeed, in many parts of Europe. Along the streets we walk, hats pulled down over ears and brows, scarves wound tightly around noses and mouths. No problem of either transparency or security is thought to exist, nor are we forbidden to enter public buildings so insulated. Moreover, many beloved and trusted professionals cover their faces all year round: surgeons, dentists, (American) football players, skiers and skaters. What inspires fear and mistrust in Europe, clearly, is not covering per se, but Muslim covering.

A reasonable demand might be that a Muslim woman have a full face photo on her driver’s licence or passport. With suitable protections for modesty during the photographic session, such a photo might possibly be required. However, we know by now that the face is a very bad identifier. At immigration checkpoints, eye-recognition and fingerprinting technologies have already replaced the photo. When these superior technologies spread to police on patrol and airport security lines, we can do away with the photo, hence with what remains of the first and second arguments. -- Martha Nussbaum

So far as the persecution of the Sunnis in Iran is concerned, it should be kept in mind that the main source of all the news of human rights violations in Iran is the Jewish, Christian and American media which are in no way based on truth. Actually, this kind of news is spread to promote Shia-Sunni divide. Currently, the US and Israel are worried about Iran’s proposed nuclear programme. Israel’s apprehension is that if Iran becomes a powerful atomic power, its existence would be at peril and the Muslims of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria will be able to avenge Israel’s barbarity and the killings of innocent people. – Maulana Maqsoodul Hasan Qasmi

Denial of the Holocaust gained currency only in the past three decades. This denial is caused by several factors. It is a way to vent anger against Israel's monopoly on victimhood, for which it unfailingly invokes the Shoah. Two cases of Holocaust denial in the last 15 years have attracted worldwide attention. In his 1995 book on Holocaust, French convert to Islam Roger Garaudy contested the validity of Holocaust accounts and had to face trial in France. In 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran issued a statement in Mecca (also to embarrass his hosts) which denied the Holocaust. He thus handed the Zionists a new whip to lash the Arabs with. In 2001, a conference of Holocaust deniers was planned in Beirut. The event was cancelled because of opposition by intellectual like Edward Said, Mahmoud Darwaish and Elias Khouri. Such intellectual giants have always opposed Holocaust denials. -- Farooq Sulehria

Despite the horrors of 26/11—and he doesn't absolve the culpability of Pak-trained terrorists in it—Haider says India should look at Pakistan, not as an enemy country but as a country fighting for its survival. And when Indians take a sympathetic look at their estranged neighbour, they will understand the magnitude of the mess in Pakistan.  A globe-trotting peacenik, Haider explodes many a myth about the West’s much-vaunted war on terror. Everyone accepts that the West created the Taliban but the two are at loggerheads today. However, Haider doesn’t accept they are at war with each other. “America and the Taliban are not adversaries. They are allies,” he says. “America will never allow the Taliban to die because that will end their game in the subcontinent,” adds Haider, who has often joined issues with the establishment and the military-mullah nexus. -- Mohammed Wajihuddin

The naive depiction by Western media makes it easy for "freedom of expression" enthusiasts to condemn Muslims for yet again failing the democracy test.

The latest Facebook episode is a remake of the same old story. Some ill-intended "artist," under the guise of freedom of speech, takes on a confrontational mission, knowing fully the response such an act would generate, and perhaps the lives that would be lost. Muslim masses, predictably, respond through angry protests, burning flags, denouncing America, Israel, Zionism, Facebook, Youtube, and so on. Strangely, the very governments that are considered US allies tend to be on the forefront of condemning the "blasphemous" provocations. Muslim masses are, thus, exploited on all fronts - by the media, by anti-Muslims, by right-wing forces in the West, and their own governments.

This, in turn, gives more ammunition to the Islamaphobes who constantly try to fan the flames in order to validate their racist perception of Muslims. The likes of Daniel Pipes, Alan Dershowitz, and other "experts" invade our TV screens and take on the responsibility of lecturing the world on Islam. They use the same reductionist and racist language that they have utilized for years in the guise of academic jargon.

Why, though, are these "academics" and "intellectuals" eager to discredit Islam? And why are Muslims playing right into their hands? -- Ramzy Baroud

Perhaps Obama is still counting on U.S. soldiers to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and win the war, even though administration officials have repeatedly rejected the notion that Afghanistan can be won militarily. David Petraeus or no, the reality is that the war will end with a political settlement involving President Karzai’s government, various Afghan warlords and power brokers, the remnants of the old Northern Alliance, the Taliban, and the Taliban’s sponsors in Pakistan.

Making all that work and winning the support of Afghanistan’s neighbors -- including India, Iran, and Russia -- will be exceedingly hard.  If Obama’s diplomats managed to pull it off, the Afghanistan that America left behind might be modestly stable. On the other hand, it won’t be pretty to look at it. It will be a decentralized mess, an uneasy balance between enlightened Afghans and benighted, Islamic fundamentalist ones, and no doubt many future political disagreements will be settled not in conference rooms but in gun battles. Three things it won’t be: It won’t be Switzerland. It won’t be a base for Al Qaeda. And it won’t be host to tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops. -- Robert Dreyfuss

We can go blue in the face shouting about the pernicious Predators, but we stay silent while innocents are slain within our own borders. What does this sovereignty we are paying homage to apparently mean to us? That the right to hurt/oppress/kill each other should exclusively be ours. Make America Bad Guy No.1 if you will, but in the race to destroy our already wounded society, I'm placing my bet on the enemy within. That's who we need to focus on fighting, says Pakistani novelist Shandana Minhas.

MUCH INK has been shed on the perils that Muslim support poses for the candidature of Barack Obama, the Democratic presumptive nominee for US presidency. But few have bothered to spell out what such backing says about Muslims in the US – and elsewhere – or even what it means for the future of US-Muslim world relations.

Support for Obama cuts across sectarian, ethnic and generational divides within the American Muslim community. It is not simply a passive preference for an anti-Iraq war votary over the Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, or even over Hillary Clinton, Obama’s erstwhile challenger for party candidature. Instead, Muslims are keenly, actively interested in having him as the first black guy to run the White House. Saif Shahin reflects on the issue in his column at Qatar Tribune.

There's little doubt that forswearing military action against Tehran should ease the upwards pressure on world oil prices - which hit a historic high on Monday of more than US$143 per barrel before, falling back to $140 - and thus offer at least some reprieve to the US consumer at a time when record gasoline prices appear to be driving widespread popular dismay with the state of the US economy. "[I]f this administration truly wanted to spare Americans further pain at the pump, there is one thing it could do that would have an immediate effect," wrote Michael Klare in this week's Nation magazine and author of a new book, Rising Power, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. "[D]eclare that military force is not an acceptable option in the struggle with Iran." Jim Lobe reports for Inter Press Service from Washington. 

Pakistanis must not be deceived. This is no clash of civilisations. To the Americans, Pakistan is an instrument to be used for their strategic ends. It is necessary and possible to say no. But the Taliban seek to capture and bind the soul and future of Pakistan in the dark prison fashioned by their ignorance. As they now set their sights on Peshawar and beyond, they must be resisted by all possible means, including adequate military force, says well-known Pakistani scholar Pervez Hoodbhoy in Pakistan’s most influential newspaper The Dawn, Karachi.

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of 5,000 pounds with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.” John Pilger reports for The Guardian, London.

The new Middle East is not a product of the collective Western imagination, as Edward Said was always reminding us, but is, rather, a Middle East that wants to be the main protagonist of its own future. The international community’s role and intervention should be completely revised. The United States and the EU should engage in a true strategic dialogue, and design an action plan different from the one deployed until now. It is necessary to stand by the parties in their efforts, encourage them to make decisions, ensure peace and security, and embolden them to be the ones to adopt the last courageous decisions and commitments, writes Miguel Angel.